A new intranet platform can bring many business benefits but when you are thinking about compiling your business case you need to think about how you can demonstrate intranet ROI. Many organisations fail to include comprehensive return on investment predictions and this can lead to senior management viewing the intranet as a just another cost rather than business critical. Here are some simple ways in which you can evaluate your intranet platform ROI.
A good place to start is to think about Intranet ROI in 3 ways: Soft benefits, hard benefits and business process improvements.
Intranet Soft Benefits:
These benefits are the intangible benefits that everyone benefits from and it’s important to highlight the intranet as being the driver. Soft benefits can include things such as reducing the email culture within your organisation. Clients regularly cite this as a major benefit that is quickly realised, once the organisation starts to realise the intranet is the place for a lot of the content traditionally emailed.
Organisations also often experience an increase in their productivity as employees are collaborating more, sharing ideas and become more engaged and enthusiastic about the organisation.
Intranet Hard Benefits:
Hard benefits are those that can organisations can place a value against and are often tangible.
Organisations often experience:
- Reductions in paper and printing costs
- Reductions in hardware and software
- Reduced time to market
- Fewer headcount, redistribution of staff
- Increased sales revenue
Each organisation will be able to monetise different hard measures, given the nature of their business. Using e-bulletins for example saved one company over £12,000 a year in printing costs, whilst another organisation saved £5000 a month by simply centralising their stationery procurement.
Finally, Business process improvements are also the result of a successful intranet. Organisations find new ways of working and working better and smarter. Some organisations may align their intranet with their business from the outset, whilst other organisations find new ways of working as a result of the intranet functionality.
If you are already shopping around for intranet options, it might be worth engaging your potential suppliers at this stage to see if they can offer support in helping you complete this critical stage of your business case.
I hope this has given you a starting point from which you can go and start to create your own ROI. To help you further you might like to download the SORCE How to write a business case guide.
Here at SORCE we’ve experienced hundreds of intranets of all shapes and sizes and are skilled at helping uncover opportunities to improve engagement and business processes.
As intranet software and consultancy providers our software powers the intranet and extranet for hundreds of organisations. Our clients cover a wide range of sectors from finance to manufacturing, not for profit organisations (such as charities and housing associations) as well as local authorities and other public sector agencies.
